1. The Go-between BY l.p. Hartley
Year 12 Summer Plan – Introduction to coursework texts

2. Key facts First published in 1953 Bildungsroman
Set at the end of the Victorian era through the eyes of a naive school boy
An insight into illicit relationships, lost innocence, trauma, and the psychological strain of the protagonist

3. Critical commentaries
Re-reading The Go-between -
Method and Myth in L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between -
For other interesting critical ideas and summaries visit:
(Includes L. P. Hartley’s alleged attitude towards affairs)

4. Introduction to the text
L P Hartley's The Go-Between projects the memories of a man in his sixties, looking back on the summer of 1900, when he turned thirteen at a grand country house in Norfolk. Rented by the family of a prep-school chum, Brandham Hall is Leo Colston's dream of England not least because it actually belongs to a viscount. An intelligent boy, highly attentive, as English prep school boys will be, to matters of rank, Leo notices a great deal, including many things that he doesn't understand, chief among them the lusty amour that he himself facilitates by playing postman to his friend's beautiful sister, Marian, and a neighbouring farmer Ted, whose
relationship is forbidden by social rank and the fact that Marian is engaged to the Viscount of Brandham Hall.

5. Opening of text
The Go-Between
The summer of 1900 would be a cool one, I decided; I should arrange for that. And the Clerk of the Weather hearkened to me. On July 1 the temperature was in the sixties and we had only had three hot days—the 10th, the 11th, and the 12th of June. I had marked them in my diary with a cross. The 1st of July also brought Mrs. Maudsley’s invitation, for in those days we still had a post on Sundays. My mother showed me the letter: it was written in a large, bold, sloping hand. I had just reached the age when I could read handwriting that was unfamiliar to me, and this accomplishment gave me some pride. Mrs. Maudsley did not ignore the possibility of measles though she took it more light-heartedly than my mother did. “If neither of our boys has come out in spots by July 10th,” she wrote, “I should be so very pleased if you would allow Leo to spend the rest of the month with us. Marcus”—ah, that was his name—”has told me quite a lot about him, and I am most anxious to make his acquaintance, if you can spare him. It will be very nice for Marcus to have a boy of his own age to play with as he is the baby of the family, and a little apt to feel left out. I understand that Leo is an only child and I promise you we will take great care of him. The Norfolk air...” etc. She ended up: “You may be surprised that we should be spending the Season in the country but neither my husband nor I have been very well, and Town is no place for a small boy in the summer.” I pored over the letter and soon committed it to memory. I imagined that its conventional phrases implied a deep and sympathetic interest in my personality; it was almost the first time I had felt myself real to somebody who didn’t know me…

6. Key themes, Ideas and links
Illicit love
Marriage
Innocence and experience
Identity
Memory and time
Morality
Self-sacrifice
Forgiveness
Social status
Religion
Jane Eyre (Victorian Romance)
Rebecca (Psychological thriller)
The Woman in Black (identity)

7. Extract analysis
Consider the key themes and idea carefully.
Focus: Language and Symbolism
‘Her face was wet with tears.
A foreigner in the world of the emotions, ignorant of their language but compelled to listen to it, I turned into the street. With every step I marvelled more at the extent of Marian's self-deception. Why then was I moved by what she had said? Why did I half wish that I could see it all as she did? And why should I go on this preposterous errand? I hadn't promised to and I wasn't a child, to be ordered about. My car was standing by the public call-box; nothing easier than to ring up Ted's grandson and make my excuses But I didn't, and hardly had I turned in at the lodge gates, wondering how I should say what I had come to say, when the south-west prospect of the Hall, long hidden from my memory, sprang into view.’